Boggsville: Kit Carson's Last Stop

Boggsville, at the confluence of the Arkansas River and the Purgatoire, was the first permanent Anglo settlement in southeastern Colorado, founded in eighteen sixty-six by Thomas Boggs and John Prowers. Both men had married into Native families, acquiring land through their Cheyenne and Mexican wives, and together they controlled vast stretches of the Arkansas River valley. Prowers at his peak ran cattle across four hundred thousand acres.

Boggsville is best remembered today as the last home of Kit Carson, the frontiersman, scout, and Indian agent who had spent roughly four decades crisscrossing the West. Carson settled here in December of eighteen sixty-seven and died at a nearby fort just months later, in May of eighteen sixty-eight. His body was brought back and temporarily buried at Boggsville before being moved to Taos.

The settlement itself faded when the railroad bypassed it, leaving only a few adobe buildings that still stand along the river.